(no subject)
'Well, then, ah...long, long ago, on the island of the Fravashing's greatest ocean, it came time for the Unfulfilled Father to leave the place of his birth. All Unfulfilled Fathers, of course, must leave their birth clan and seek the acceptance of a different one, on another island - else the clans would become inbred and it would be impossible for the Fravashi Fathers to learn the wisdom of faraway places. In preparation for his journey, the Unfulfilled Father began to gather up all the shraddha seeds on the island. The First Least Father saw him doing this and took him aside. "Why are you gathering so many seeds?" he asked. "Don't you know that the Fravashi won't invent boats for another five millions years? Don't you know that you will have to swim to the island of your new life? How can you swim with ten thousand pounds of seeds?" And the Unfulfilled Father replied, "These shradda seeds are the only food I know, and I'll need every one of them when I get to the new island." At this, the First Least Father whistled at him and said, "Don't you suppose you will find food on your new island?" And the Unfulfilled Father argued, "But shradda seeds grow only on this island, and I will starve without them." Whereupon the First Least Father laughed and said, "But what if this turned out to be a parable and your shradda seeds were not seeds at all, but rather your basic beliefs?" The Unfulfilled Father told him, "I don't understand," and he swam out into the ocean with all his seeds. There he drowned, and sad to say, he never came within sight of his new island.'
Ah, isn't David Zindell brilliant? ^_^